Characteristics of a multi-pass membrane reactor to improve hydrogen recovery

Membrane reactors are a potential tool to produce high purity hydrogen on-site but sufferfrom immense losses in hydrogen recovery under reaction conditions. For high temperature operations, these losses mostly occur due to the presence of lesser permeable gases in the reformate that develop into a concentration polarization barrier around the membrane. Based on our previous findings, a multi-pass design was manifested to alleviate hydrogen losses through the membrane tested with synthetic gas mixtures. The same design is currently employed to establish improvement in hydrogen recovery under reaction conditions. Having a catalyst and membrane integrated into a single unit termed as a membrane reactor, its performance is optimized with varying membrane assembly and catalyst bed configurations. This study shows that a packed bed multi-pass membrane reactor is an optimal design to target high hydrogen recovery. Further, multi-pass membrane reactor design also improves the hydrogen recovery in fluidized bed operations which opens immense scope for future studies. (c) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Membrane reactors have been found to alleviate hydrogen losses by improving design, with packed bed multi-pass membrane reactor being identified as the optimal design for achieving high hydrogen recovery. This design also shows improvement in hydrogen recovery in fluidized bed operations, opening up opportunities for future research.